SPDIF to 5.1 Surround Sound

[MarkJ]

Hi, the Mrs bought a new telly a few days ago. The old telly used to send audio using a phono cable to an ancient DVD player that then acted as the receiver for the 5 speakers and sub woofer. This DVD player was only used as the receiver, we have a separate Bluray player. The new TV only has an SPDIF optical output so we can't use this any more.

As the Mrs bought the TV, my contribution is to get the new TV playing through the 5.1 speakers again (and also buy a wall mount, but that's sorted).

The Mrs still wants to use the 5 speakers we have dotted around the living room with the new TV, so I need a way of converting the SPDIF output from the TV to the 5.1 speakers. We don't need HDMI switching as we have enough HDMI ports on the back of the telly for the Sky box and Bluray player. I was going to buy a second hand receiver off ebay until I stumbled across the audio decoders on eBay (example) for about £25.

Has anyone used one of these before? Most of the inputs/outputs on a proper receiver would never be used so i'm not sure if a receiver would be overkill, and they seem fairly large.

I hardly ever watch TV, it's the Mrs that watches it 95% of the time. We're not audiophiles, and clearly aren't bothered about true surround sound as we've been using a surround sound system supplied by a stereo lead for ages. I don't want to be spending money on a large receiver unit if it's un-necessary, as they're pretty big and we won't use most of the outputs.

Opinions?

[oldpink]

should work fine (your example)
I've used similar D/A converters to hook up audio visual setups when the gear wasn't compatible
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[MarkJ]

Cheers, bought it. Hopefully will be OK for what we need

[ferrisio]

Are the speakers active (i.e. powered) then? If not you'll still need a receiver (or 3 stereo amps).
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